Buttercup Dairy

Buttercup Dairy was the name of a chain of shops in Scotland that was founded by Andrew Ewing at the turn of the 20th century. Although the term has fallen out of use today in Scotland, a 'dairy' was a shop that sold things like bread, milk, eggs and butter before the advent of supermarkets. The term does not seem to have been used south of the border, where the term 'grocer' was preferred. It seems that even today, New Zealanders call convenience shops 'dairies', so the name is not extinct in the English-speaking world.
The first Buttercup Dairy was in Kirkcaldy, with several Edinburgh locations opening by 1910. The Dairy on Warrender Park Road recently had its shop front restored by the current tenants, Fraser/Livingstone Architects. Eventually there were 250 Buttercup Dairies throughout Scotland.
Sources: The Scotsman on Andrew Ewing
The Edinburgh Evening News on Fraser/Livingstone
Return to 3rd March 1954